Hackaday

Hackaday is a daily blog that features numerous articles focused on hardware and software hacks. A hack can mean altering an existing product or software, or inventing something new for purposes like convenience, creativity, or functionality. In addition to the blog, Hackaday operates a YouTube channel where they share project ideas and instructional videos.

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Video Game Preservation Through Decompilation

4 days ago | hackaday.com | Tom Nardi

Unlike computer games, which smoothly and continuously evolved along with the hardware that powered them, console games have up until very recently been constrained by a generational style of development. Sure there were games that appeared on multiple platforms, and eventually newer consoles would feature backwards compatibility that allowed them to play select titles from previous generations of hardware.
Measurement Is Science

6 days ago | hackaday.com | Elliot Williams

I was watching Ben Krasnow making iron nitride permanent magnets and was struck by the fact that about half of the video was about making a magnetometer – a device for measuring and characterizing the magnet that he’d just made. This is really the difference between doing science and just messing around: if you want to test or improve on a procedure, you have to be able to measure how well it works.
All You Need To Know About Photographic Lenses

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jenny List

If you have ever played around with lenses, you’ll know that a convex lens can focus an image onto a target. It can be as simple as focusing the sun with a magnifying glass to burn a hole in a piece of paper, but to achieve the highest quality images in a camera there is a huge amount of optical engineering and physics at play to counteract the imperfections of those simple lenses.
This Week In Security: That Time I Caused A 9.5 CVE, IOS Spyware, And The Day The Internet Went Down

1 week ago | hackaday.com | MCP Bypassed |Jonathan Bennett

Meshtastic just released an eye-watering 9.5 CVSS CVE, warning about public/private keys being re-used among devices. And I’m the one that wrote the code. Not to mention, I triaged and fixed it. And I’m part of Meshtastic Solutions, the company associated with the project. This is is the story of how we got here, and a bit of perspective. First things first, what kind of keys are we talking about, and what does Meshtastic use them for?
Bento Is An All-In-One Computer Designed To Be Useful

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jenny List

All-in-one computers in which the mainboard lurked beneath a keyboard were once the default in home computing, but more recently they have been relegated to interesting niche devices such as the Raspberry Pi 400 and 500. The Bento is another take on the idea, coming at it not with the aim of replacing a desktop machine, instead as a computer for use with wearable display glasses. The thinking goes that when your display is head mounted, why carry around a screen with your laptop.
Game Boy? NES? Why Not Both!

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jenny List

If you’re a retro Nintendo fan you can of course carry a NES and a Game Boy around with you, but the former isn’t very portable. Never fear though, because here’s [Chad Burrow], who’s created a neat handheld console that emulates both. It’s called the Acolyte Handheld, and it sports the slightly unusual choice for these parts of a PIC32 as its main processor. Unexpectedly it can use Sega Genesis controllers, but it has the usual buttons on board for portable use.
FLOSS Weekly Episode 837: World’s Best Beta Tester

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jonathan Bennett

This week Jonathan chats with Geekwife! What does a normal user really think of Linux on the desktop and Open Source options? And what is it really like, putting up with Jonathan’s shenanigans? Watch to find out!Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us! Take a look at the schedule here. Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.
ESP32 Dashboard Is A Great Way To Stay Informed

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jenny List

The original ESP32 may be a little long in the tooth by now, but it remains a potent tool for connected devices. We were drawn to [Max Pflaum]’s ESP32 Dashboard as a great example, it’s an ESP32 hooked up to an e-paper display. The hardware is simple enough, but the software is what makes it interesting. This is deigned as a configurable notification tool, so to make it bend to the user’s will a series of widgets can be loaded onto it.
Capturing Screenshots Using A Fake Printer

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Jenny List

If you have very old pieces of analogue test equipment with CRTs on your bench, the chances are they will all have surprisingly similar surrounds to their screens. Back when they were made it was common to record oscilloscope screens with a Polaroid camera, that would have a front fitting for just this purpose. More recent instruments are computerized so taking a screen shot should be easier, but that’s still not easy if the machine can’t save to a handy disk.
StatusNotifierItem: How Standard Non-Standards Tear Linux Desktops Apart

1 week ago | hackaday.com | Maya Posch

Theoretically when you write a GUI-based application for Linux there are standards to follow, with these all neatly documented over at the Freedesktop website. However, in reality, Freedesktop is more of a loose collection of specifications, some of which are third-party specifications that have somehow become the de facto standard. One example of this is the StatusNotifierItem spec that provides a way for applications to create and manage a ‘system tray’ icon.